Twice Upon a Thestral
by Erissianne
Summary: She had died happy, content with her life and her family. Nothing prepared her for rebirth as a waifish and by all rights traumatised young girl named Luna in a world she knows so much but so little about. Somehow, she will find a way to tweak its future. After all, her children might never forgive her otherwise. Loving the Potter series was practically a family tradition.
1. Chapter 1

She had died, as all of us inevitably find we do. By rights, she should be at rest or facing judgement. It wasn't that the woman was particularly desirous of oblivion, but Petra wasn't an idiot. The doctors had said her kidneys had failed. Her lungs had been struggling for months, and she hadn't spent a day without some form of pain for years.

That's what happened when you grew old. Your body gained new aches and pains, certain muscles became harder to stretch, weaker and less able to support your own weight. Organs shut down, and you have to learn to adapt and adjust to those changes.

Petra had drifted to sleep with the help of a morphine drip, doing her best to squeeze the hand of a grandchild. She had opened her eyes to an almost nauseating amount of clarity, made all the worse for the disjointed nature of it.

Her eyes were burning, far too much light having seared her retinas, and she was crouched with what felt like _her_ hands covering her ears. There was so much _wrong_ with that, from the awkward way her legs tucked in under her, to the fact this wooden room covered in chalk and ink and fluttering pieces of some material too thick to be paper. It reminded Petra of vellum, of the wedding invitations she'd helped pick out for her son. Pleasant as that might be, it was not the hospital room she had been tucked into for hospice care; it did not hold any of her loved ones or anything she recognized.

She had been at peace, as much as she could be. Ready to pass on and leave her mistakes and accomplishments alike behind. Petra was sure that she _had_ died. A certain awareness that she couldn't quite explain insisted that she had. It was over.

But nothing was over, was it?

Because she was in a strange room with either too tall furniture or a too small body. A room that just being in felt like coming out the wrong end of a kaleidoscope. So she itched at her skin, _toosmall_ , and studied the strange, pale hands moving at her command.

It looked as if she had been holding bird feathers. Perhaps even a bird or a pillow, Petra couldn't remember what goose down looked like to be sure, and she didn't think she wanted to know. Jerkily, she let the feathers go, watching them trail through the room on an air current she couldn't see or feel.

The feathers tickled her skin and hair as they left, and Petra wanted to vomit. Both from the overstimulation and because she finally noticed the body.

The listless long haired blonde couldn't be much older than her Cassia, but her skin was burnt and still burning. The fire in her bones made as little sense to Petra as anything else, which meant it also made as _much_ sense.

Whoever she was or had been, Petra cried for her. For the sheer impossibility of it all, for finding herself in a room while a young woman slowly turned to ash in utter silence. Petra tried again to find her feat, to stumble to anything resembling an exit. It was almost a relief when she fell through the trap door.

Why would she have thought to look down?

Her relief was short lived, because instead of actually _falling_ , she floated. This time, she screamed.

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Descending through the air as if she were on an elevator aside, Petra couldn't say she had any better idea of where she was now. It didn't seem like any afterlife that she'd ever heard of. The spiral staircase she landed gently on aside, the room in front of her was just as perfectly circular as the one before.

The circles of hell from Dante were never described quite like this. It had been decades since she'd read Dante's Inferno, but even if the first room was a parody of a Circle of Fire, this room was much more… homely. Cluttered with overstuffed couches, animated figures on the ceiling, children's books, and sheaves of papers. Some of which, when approached, appeared almost holographic as the images moved.

Except they moved all on their own, not just at the tilt of Petra's head.

She was too old for this. Too old to be quite this small, this pale, this _young_. If this was reincarnation, then why wasn't she a babe? Why was she wandering around a nonsensical house alone? And who had that woman been?

Petra sifted through the books, magazines, and newsprint that covered this floor, only recognizing a few of the titles. It was the paper, in the end, that answered her question the best. **The Daily Prophet** it's tagline proudly bore, with the number two and a symbol she assumed must be for knuts in the top right hand corner. The date, she noticed rather belatedly, was the 22nd of August, 1990.

She'd been sorted into her children and grandchildren's favorite world for her afterdeath? The term afterlife felt wrong when Petra was sure she felt very much alive. Even if she was in the past and in a world quite different from her own.

Some of Petra's questions would never be answered. Was this real or a hallucination after hearing her daughter wax on about all of her favorite stories or watching her grandchildren and grandniblings act out various scenes over and over. Was her situation normal? Or was What Dreams May Come slightly more accurate in everyone having their own heavens and hells than she'd ever given it credit for? When she died in this life, would she stay dead? Reunite with her own family members?

No, those were not questions Petra would have answered for quite a long while yet, if ever.

The newly minted young girl did learn some things, however, when a beanpole of a man whose hair was just as long and scraggly blonde as her own billowed in and went from cheerful smiles to concernedly searching the building. Petra crouched low, hiding behind a bookshelf as the stranger loped up the stairs.

She thought to warn him of the body, but then he'd _see_ her. So she stayed hidden and listened guiltily to the shocked tears, flashes of light she assumed were spells glinting through the ceiling as he tried to revive her.

Later, as the man tossed the house with all the desperation of a whirlwind, Petra discovered her new name was Luna, and that she had come into this world on the heels of the greatest grief her new father had ever faced. Grief he clearly did not know how to handle, for as the days passed he forgot to eat or sleep. The man barely moved unless she encouraged him. There was only so much she could do on her own, in a magical household she barely knew anything about, surrounded by books on cryptozoology and conspiracy theories as much as proven fact.

Petra – Luna? – could keep an open mind; this was her second life, it would be hypocritical to do anything otherwise. What she did not know how to do was convince Xeno to bury his wife's body and to at least go through the motions of his daily routine. It was difficult enough figuring out how to start tea and find where they kept their food.

Her saving grace was Molly Weasley, someone she had almost forgotten was neighbors with the Lovegoods. The kindly matron came over to check on Luna after she missed a preplanned playdate with her daughter Ginny. A daughter that Petra knew terribly little about at this age. Luckily, she didn't need to. Once Petra solemnly informed Mrs. Weasley that 'Daddy won't leave Mommy's body', the woman took over instantly, leaving her terribly grateful. She was soon bundled off to spend the night with the Weasleys – 'You're getting too skinny, dear. We'll have you back in no time, don't you worry.' – while Arthur was sent back to talk some sense into the mourning husband and father.

It was so good to eat hot food again. Petra trailed Mrs. Weasley throughout the kitchen, watching what an actively magical household looked like. She didn't want to speak too much, which unsettled the young girl she knew must be Ginny, but it would be better to say nothing than to admit how little she knew.

Stranger things happened from grief in a young child than selective mutism.

That did not mean she was in anyway incurious. But as the one night became two, then a week, she'd managed to listen in on a number of unsettling conversations, and set off more than a few pranks from the twins who were determined to either cheer her up or make her talk to Ginny.

Their plan worked, in a way, because she did find herself sneaking out with the young girl and watching her practice flying. Petra was silent as Ginny drilled herself, but she hadn't missed the occasional looks precisely where she stood.

When the would be Chaser landed, she offered her a small smile. "You're quite good, you know."

Ginny almost tripped but caught herself, then offered Luna – her name _was_ Luna now, and she really needed to remember that – a tentative smile of her own. "You won't tell anyone, will you?"

Luna shook her head, and they walked in companionable silence back to the house and to Ginny's room.

"You're going back to your dad's tomorrow, aren't you? To the Rookery?"

This time, she nodded.

They remained in the quiet together, staring into the dark silence where they could imagine another girl's face might be on the adjacent bed.

"I'm really sorry, Luna." Ginny didn't say what for, but the other girl could guess. She said nothing, turning over and clinging to her pillow instead, because she was sorry too. Sorry for the death of Luna's mother. Sorry for her father's grief. Sorry that when she had been ready to let go since all of her friends and siblings had long passed on, she ended up in the body of a nine year old. She no longer felt her actual age. Neither the age she had died at or the age she physically now was.

"Do you think," Luna asked quite a while later. "That we can make a better future?"

"What do you mean?"

The blonde turned back over, pulling her hair out from under her shoulder where it had gotten trapped, before sighing. "I'm not sure," she admitted. "Just… better. _Different._ "

She could hear the sleepy smile as Ginny mumbled, "Go back to sleep, Lune."

And while she hadn't _been_ sleeping, she did drift off, wondering as she often did about how she was in the past in a world so full of magic and wonder she didn't know how long it would take to grasp it all.

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 **A/N: Short little start of a plot bunny that's been nibbling at me for a while. I've seen some beautiful OC insert into a canon character stories across so many fandoms (although I believe Magical Me, oc as Lockhart is the one I associate most with the Harry Potter fandom. I have not personally seen anyone do something like it with Luna. I'm going to be feeling this out as I go, and if it doesn't work out to be something worth continuing than it doesn't. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, as they say.**

 **I wanted the OC - Petra - to have died from old age rather than a sudden trauma like a car wreck so she had lived a long, full life. That said, I am not, myself, old enough to necessarily _fully capture_ that and while I may delve some into the body horror of skinjacking with Cynthia occasionally and/or in the future in INI, I am going to have Petra/Luna settle much smoother. This new Luna will just quite literally be an old soul that's had one helluva preview on what might be and could have been.**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Thank you for the faves and follows!**

 **Slytherson: I will continue to work on this story as long as I have inspiration for it. I think the concept could be quite interesting, but I won't currently be dedicating as much time to it as INI. I'm debating planning a non OC fic to post on this account (for once, I know, crazy), and I definitely don't want to bite off more than I can chew.**

 **So many stories, so little time. But on with the show!**

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Surprisingly enough, it turned out that Luna's father was the easiest person to ask questions of. He didn't seem to realize that his daughter's personality had changed at all, which was useful even if it did make her feel incredibly uncomfortable, and even if some of his answers were definitively not what she wanted to hear.

Did she have any surviving grandparents? Yes, Gran Phoebe. Your mother's mother. Where did she live? She's in and out of treatment these days, but last I heard she was planning on taking the opportunity to visit France. Sprightly old bird. Would she make it to the funeral? That had already been taken care of. But there would be a memorial next month.

Luna's heart had lurched at that. Pandora might not have been her mother, and she didn't particularly consider the Lovegoods to be her family just yet, but the thought of what she had always heard described as a devoted and loving father denying his daughter the chance to see her mother buried had stung.

She would learn later that Pandora had been interred into the ground in a garden within the Lovegood's property, a heart shaped border of boulders and vines sealing in all manner of flowers and a small, family cemetery. Xeno had maintained that Luna had already had to witness her mother dying, she did not need to say farewell to her again. Instead, she could visit her in the present tense.

Sweet, in a strange way.

That summed up life with one Xenophilius Lovegood completely. She was given a great deal of latitude to study and explore whatever she wished. More latitude than she _should_ have received as a nine year old girl, but she wasn't particularly upset with the independence it afforded her.

He did look surprised when she wanted a pair of Muggle clothes. He'd even given her a lecture about how there was no need to hinder her own self expression, and that if anyone had made a comment about her clothes she mustn't listen to them. _He_ thought that her designs were marvelous, and that she didn't have to change just because her mother wasn't with them.

Instead of taking her shopping, the man proceeded to teach the girl spells to alter her clothes. That only worked so well. For one, she was given Pandora's wand – which seemed rather cautious of her if that were possible, and caused Xeno to stare off into the distance for minutes at a time. For another, this Luna didn't know a thing about casting magic.

She chose not to question the matter of the Trace, since Xeno was the only one who successfully cast magic regardless. She received a too bright yellow dress out of the deal, and called it good.

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That dress did come in handy. It was long enough to cover her feet, and while it could certainly be considered odd, it was also charming, particularly by the standards of the decade. The unconditioned hair was something she would just have to make do with. In some respects, she agreed with her new father. She had lived to around eighty four in her last life, and by that time, she had stopped caring what other people thought of her clothes. If she wanted to get dressed up to go absolutely nowhere, then heaven help her, she _would_. If she wanted to go out in nothing but sweats, then she would do _that_ too.

This time, all she had to do was purchase the correct amount of postage to send a letter the normal way. She was positive of the address and was certainly familiar enough with the process, but there was an extreme lack of nonmagical currency in the house.

Whatever force had determined she be reincarnated in this world clearly believed in including all manner of obstacles.

Luna wrote and rewrote her initial letter to Harry, scribbling on discarded misprints of the Quibbler until Xeno noticed her working so furiously. He'd sat her down again and informed her that no intrepid young reporter would be left without her own parchment in his house and that she could always come to him. He hadn't even blinked an eye when she informed him that she rather fancied making Harry Potter her friend, and that she was _not_ reporting on anything at this time. Instead, he'd complimented her and given her a new inkwell.

Perhaps she would have to send the letter the wizarding way after all.

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 _Dear Harry,_

 _I had so hoped to write you in the normal fashion, but it's terribly difficult. I suppose because neither of us are normal, are we? No matter how hard we might try to be anything else, we can only be as we are._

 _You, Harry James Potter, can be nothing short of extraordinary._

 _I bet you're thinking, 'Why did a bird come out of nowhere to deliver this bizarre letter?'_

 _Firstly, he's a very sweet raven named Bran. Secondly, he brought you the letter because I asked, silly. I'll be giving him lots of bacon and treats when he gets back. No need to worry about feeding him._

 _My name is Luna. Do you want to be friends?_

 _Beir bua agus beannacht!_

 _Luna Lovegood_

 _P.S. The extra sheet is for you. Bran will hang around for a few days in case you want to reply. He's very good at coming to a whistle._

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"Be extra sure he's _alone_ , Bran. No one can be watching him, okay? Especially not anyone in his house."

Bran preened Luna's hair patiently, apparently quite accustomed to the eccentricities of humans given his owners. She scritched under the raven's shoulder blades lightly as she solemnly gave him Harry's address.

She wasn't sure how her letter would be received. Originally, she had planned to mail him pretending to have chosen a random pen pal from the phone book. That had to be scrapped for obvious reasons, although it would still work as a cover story if she ever got her hands on either pounds or stamps in general.

Until then…

"Daddy?"

"Yes, sunshine?"

"Do we have any maps?"

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While Luna was learning the magical art of cartography, a young boy in Little Whinging, Surrey was having a very odd day indeed. Aunt Petunia had sent him out to tend the garden while Dudley was visiting Piers house for tea.

He'd been weeding in the sun for several hours now, and the water from the garden hose was doing little to distract the boy's belly from how little he had been able to eat that morning. Aunt Petunia had been in a good mood today, but two pieces of toast hardly made for enough food for a growing boy.

When the black bird first arrived, he had been sure it was a crow, something his aunt would not approve of getting near her prize winning garden at all. No amount of pleading dissuaded the bird. So Harry had charged it, terrified of what might happen to the poor thing if Dudley got a hold of it, and of what might happen to _him_ if the bird got the better of Dudley.

For some reason, when the bird finally left, it croaked right at him and dropped a thick envelope.

 _ **To Harry Potter**_ it read in rich plum ink. _**Please read when alone.**_

Who had ever heard of a crow delivering a letter? Harry thought dazedly, stuffing the envelope between his waistband to try and hide it for now. If he stayed out of sight for too long when he still had chores to complete, Aunt Petunia would be cross.

The only other option was that the letter had simply appeared, had already _been_ on the ground. Harry might have believed it if it hadn't been an area of the yard he had tended earlier that morning.

So the letter _must_ have arrived with the bird.

It was almost as strange as the purple robed man in the top hat bowing to him at the grocer, and Harry found himself feeling truly cheerful as he imagined the possibilities of what the letter could contain.

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Short and sweet. I spent an agonizing amount of time coming up with a reason for anyone to name their child Xenophilius and coming up with my theory of what family Pandora is from etc etc. The latter, at least, will come up in the memorial.

I feel so bad for Xeno. He's such a loving father; he really, really is, but I do not imagine him handling his beloved's death well at all.

Harry's reply will be next chapter, along with Luna learning a bit more about her new extended family.


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